Beschreibung:

Letter from first American envoy to Hawaii after U.S. annexation Author: Sewall, Harold Marsh Place: Honolulu, Hawaii Publisher: Date: Nov. 30, 1899 Description: 8 pp. on stationery of “Special Agency [formerly Legation] of the United States to Hawaii. Autograph Letter Signed, to an uncle, probably Swedenborgian Minister Rev. Frank Sewall. Sewall was the last U.S. envoy to the short-lived Hawaiian Republic after the overthrow of the monarchy and the first after annexation to the United States. Sewall, a prominent Republican, was hoping to become the first American Governor of the new territory, though he knew his imperialist (and racist) views were opposed by Hawaiian capitalists. Sewall failed in his gubernatorial ambitions and sadly had to give up his beautiful home on the beach where his wife and children played barefoot in the sand. Sewall's father, curiously, had been Democrat William Jennings Bryan’s vice presidential running-mate in the 1896 election. The Hawaiian capitalists built their fortunes from sugar plantations that depended on Japanese and Chinese immigrant labor. Ironically, being descended from Abolitionists before the Civil War, Sewall considered these Hawaiian plantations akin to the “curse of slavery to the South” as they contributed to the “degradation of white labor by those of an inferior race.” “…You know evidently how pleased I was to see consummation of my very cherished hopes here. It did not come in the way I had expected for I fear without the [Spanish-american] war it might not even now have come to pass at all…how happy I am to have seen it as it has become the theatre of our national ac tion. I am unequivocally an expansionist - an Imperialist if you will with the full faith in our ability to deal with all the responsibilities with which we are confronted. I go further than those conservative people who support expansion now openly because there seems to be no way of relieving ourselves honorably of the territory we have acquired. I am an expansionist… for the sake of… the selfish commercial and material advantages which the acquirement of territory brings us. I hope and believe the President will be supported in the policy he has had the courage and foresight to formulate. Here we have passed only the first stage in the transfer of sovereignty and I am working to have our laws extended here speedily and an American Governor at the helm, and this aside from any personal interest. Arrayed against me are…some of the office holders and many of the planters and capitalists who want to have things run on about as they are receiving all the benefits they can…from annexation sharing with us none of the burdens. Fortunes have been built up here in a few years by free admission to our markets and now these people wish to retain the peculiar and unamerican system of labor…by which they were built up…The heart of the masses of the white people is all right and they fully sympathize with me and oppose Asiatic immigration…which threatens their destruction. In a way it (sugar plantations) is as was the curse of slavery to the South - the building up of immense fortunes and the degradation of white labor by those of an inferior race. It is a hard question to solve, whether our commissioners… will be able to solve it wisely I don’t know…” Lot Amendments Condition: Small separations at folds; very good. Item number: 318155